Monday, January 23, 2012

[ZESTCaste] Republic of contradictions (Opinion)

Sixty three years ago, Dr B.R. Ambedkar spoke of the "life ofcontradictions" into which the Indian Republic would enter on January26, 1950.

He underlined the need for eliminating, at the earliest, thecontradictions in the social and economic sphere lest they shouldimperil our political freedom and democracy. Were he to come alivetoday, he would be appalled to see the extent to which thecontradictions have deepened and, that too during the period when theRepublic saw one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

A report by the Naadi Foundation on Hunger and Malnutrition, which wasreleased by the Prime Minister on January 11, 2012, has brought outthat "59 per cent of the Indian children, between the age group of 0-5years, have stunted growth, 42 per cent are underweight and 11 percent suffer from wasting disease". Every year, 13 lakh children diebefore reaching their first birthday, and about 55,000 women losetheir life consequent upon birth-related complications.

Even now, as noted by the Unicef, in its report of 2009, 40 per centof the world's child marriages occur in India" and "about 47 per centof Indian women in the age group of 20 to 24 years, covered by thesurvey, were found to have been married off before attaining the legalage of 18".

It is the socially and culturally sanctioned practices and not theprovision of law that generally matter.

Many other recent reports prepared by reputed agencies, both nationaland international, have reminded us of the agonising reality that hascontinued to curl around the body politic of our Republic, and withwhich we have been dealing without much zeal or inner commitment. The"human development index" value assigned to India in the 2011 reportof the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is substantiallylow.

It is merely 0.547, and goes down further to 0.392 if the element ofinequality is factored in. India's overall rank is 134 amongst 187countries covered by the report. Her position on "gender inequalityindex" is no less dismal; India is 129th in the list of 146 countriessurveyed. When measured on the UNDP's "multi-dimensional povertyindex", about 53 per cent of the total population of India would haveto be reckoned as poor and living under distress.

It is primarily on account of this distress that in 2010 alone as manyas 15,968 farmers and 28,152 self-employed persons in industry, tradeand other professions committed suicide. The ever-increasing migrantsto the major Indian cities are finding shelter only in the hell-holeof slums.

About 38 million of them are afflicted with serious water-bornediseases. Over half of the world's most polluted cities are in India.Because of the poor quality of air, 18,000 premature deaths and 1.7crore cases of illness occur each year in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata andChennai.

What makes the above conditions all the more tragic is that they havepersisted even when India is virtually witnessing a "Gilded Age" ofnouveau billionaires and when luxury houses, posh malls and sprawlinggolf courses are sprouting like mushroom in its metropolises. India'scapital, Delhi, alone has been, on an average, adding about 1,000motor vehicles on roads every day. The contradictions that theRepublic is rearing are, indeed, unprecedented.

It is the poor governance capacity of our system as a whole that hasbadly let the Republic down. In this regard, bureaucracy has to sharea major part of the blame. The Indian Civil Services, whichconstituted the steel frame of the administrative setup at the time ofIndependence, had justifiably earned the reputation of being the bestin the world; otherwise how could a mere 1,000 members of the serviceeffectively maintain law and order throughout the length and breadthof British India and also carry out such remarkable developmentprojects as setting up of an extensive network of canal irrigation inPunjab and Uttar Pradesh?

The remnants of this service and its successor, IAS, served theRepublic well for the first few years of its life and played aprominent role in the integration of 562 princely states,rehabilitation of displaced persons and ushering in of the GreenRevolution. But, due to the emergence of narrow politics of power anduncongenial social and cultural environment, the services startedlosing their verve, vitality and moral pie. They were soonoverburdened with junk, and their interior spaces were infested withall types of pests.

Now, the Indian bureaucracy as a class is being labelled asobstructionist and venal. A Hongkong-based research group, namedPolitical and Economic Risk Consultancy, in its report of January2012, has rated this bureaucracy as "the worst in Asia". That thisappellation is not uncalled for can be seen from the fact that the2011 report of the ministry of programme implementation itself showsthat the delay in executing the plan projects would cost the publicexchequer an additional amount of Rs 1.20 lakh crore.

The system of education in the Republic, too, has been marred by itsunwholesome development. The recent data shows that 38 per cent of thedoctors, 36 per cent of the Nasa technicians and 34 per cent ofMicrosoft employees working in the US are Indians and that they havemostly Indian educational background. But the other side of thesystem's reality is that at present about two-thirds of universitiesand about 90 per cent of colleges are performing below average.

In respect of school education, January 2012 report of theOrganisation for Economic Cooperation and Development regarding itsInternational Student Assessment Programme has ranked Indian highersecondary students only better than those from Kyrgyzstan among 74participating countries.

On its birthday, all the well-wishers of the Republic should ponderover what the future holds for her. Would her freedom, in view ofsocial and economic contradictions that her system is engendering, beblown up, as apprehended by Ambedkar, or would she turn a new page inher life?

W.E. Channing, a famous unitarian preacher of the 19th century, hadmade a highly insightful observation about the manner in which a setupundergoes a fundamental transformation: "There are seasons, in humanaffairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to bebroken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, anda new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when theprinciples of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust andinstincts claim a share with prudence in the guidance of affairs,when, in truth, to dare is the highest wisdom."

I am not sure whether a season for inward and outward revolution hascome for India, whether new depths would break up in her soul, whethera new and undefined good would be thirsted for by her, whether hopeand trust and instinct would claim a share with her prudence andwhether she would attain her highest wisdom by daring.

But I have no doubt that unless the Indian Republic is soon visited bysuch a season of inward and outward revolution and she attains herhighest wisdom by daring, she faces a bleak future and hercontradictions and crudities would multiply and assume a more sinisterform.